The bells of Bideford church cannot help breaking forth into a jocund peal.  Bideford streets are a very flower-garden of all the colours, swarming with seamen and burghers and burghers’ wives and daughters, all in their holiday attire.  Garlands are hung across the streets and tapestries from every window.  Every stable is crammed with horses, and Sir Richard Grenville’s house is like a very tavern.  Along the little churchyard streams all the gentle blood of North Devon, and on into the church, where all are placed according to their degrees, not without shovings and whisperings from one high-born matron and another.  At last there is a silence, and a looking toward the door, and then distant music which comes braying and screaming up to the very church doors.  Why are all eyes fixed on those four weather-beaten mariners, decked out with knots and ribbons by loving hands?  And yet more on that gigantic figure who walks before them, a beardless boy, and yet with the frame and stature of a Hercules, towering, like Saul of old, a head and shoulders above all the congregation?  And why, as the five fall on their knees before the altar rails, are all eyes turned to the pew where Mrs. Leigh, of Burrough, has hid her face between her hands, and her hood rustles and shakes to her joyful sobs?  Because there was fellow-feeling of old in country and in town.  And these are Devon men, and men of Bideford; and they, the first of all English mariners, have sailed round the world with Francis Drake, and are come to give God thanks.

II.—­The Brotherhood of the Rose

It was during the three years of Amyas’s absence that Rose Salterne, the motherless daughter of that honest merchant, the Mayor of Bideford, had grown into so beautiful a girl of eighteen that half North Devon was mad about the “Rose of Torridge,” as she was called.  There was not a young gallant for ten miles round who would not have gone to Jerusalem to win her, and not a week passed but some nosegay or languishing sonnet was conveyed into the Rose’s chamber, all of which she stowed away with the simplicity of a country girl.

Frank Leigh, Amyas’s elder brother, who had won himself honour at home and abroad, and was the friend of Sir Philip Sidney and in favour at the court of Queen Elizabeth, fell as deeply in love with the Rose when he came home to rejoice over the return of Amyas as any young squire of the county.

When the time came for him to set off again for London and for Amyas to join the queen’s forces in Ireland, where war was now raging, Frank and Amyas concocted a scheme which was put into effect the next day—­first by the innkeeper of the Ship Tavern, who began, under Amyas’s orders, a bustle of roasting and boiling; and next by Amyas himself, who invited as many of his old schoolfellows as Frank had pointed out to him to a merry supper; by which crafty scheme in came each of Rose Salteme’s gentle admirers and found himself seated at the table with six rivals.